Exit poll: Putin wins election Sunday with 61 percent of vote

President Vladimir Putin’s party won more than 60 percent of the vote in Russia’s parliamentary election Sunday, an exit poll indicated.\nUnited Russia was leading the field with 61 percent of the vote, with the Communists trailing far behind with 11.5 percent, according to the poll conducted by the state-owned All-Russia Opinion Research Center.\nTwo other pro-Kremlin parties – Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party and Just Russia – also made it into parliament with 8.8 and 8.4 percent of the vote respectively. The nationwide poll was commissioned by the state-controlled Channel One television.\nPollsters said United Russia’s performance would give it a crushing majority of 306 seats in the 450-seat lower house, the State Duma. The two pro-Kremlin parties would have 45 and 42 seats respectively.\nThe Communists, the only opposition force, will have 57 seats, according to the poll, which was based on face-to-face interviews with voters at 1,200 precincts across Russia. The margin of error was about 2 percentage points.\nAnother nationwide poll, conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation, which is technically independent but considered Kremlin-friendly, showed United Russia winning with 62.3 percent of the vote.\nThe survey polled about 80,000 respondents and had a margin of error of 1 percentage point.